The present invention relates generally to forwarding telephone calls. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for call forwarding from a plurality of different telephones lines to a single call-forwarded telephone number.
Many office workers spend a sizable portion of their day outside their base office or away from their office telephone. For example, workers may be at other locations within their office building, outside their office building at remote sites, or in transit between sites. In all cases there is often a need to stay xe2x80x9cconnectedxe2x80x9d with the office telephone system, having the ability to receive calls that would normally go to the office phone. Call forwarding is one of the most prevalent and valuable features for telephony users in the office or home settings and in mobile settings.
Today, call forwarding is typically provided as a telephone system service by a local office/building PBX or by a telephony central office. The most basic operation is that a user can somehow signal this feature and cause calls going to their office phone, to be redirected to another phone.
In one typical system, as shown in FIG. 1, a user activates call forwarding by entering a sequence of button-presses on the keypad and/or button set of their office telephone 30. This button press sequence usually includes call forwarding on/off codes and a xe2x80x9cforward-toxe2x80x9d number. As shown in FIG. 1, once call forwarding has been activated, inbound calls are forwarded from office telephone 30 to remote telephone 15 via a switching network 10 such as public switched telephone network (PSTN). Switching network 10 includes a switch 6 that performs the call forwarding functionality. Operationally, the user normally activates call forwarding at his office location just before leaving his office and similarly disables call forwarding upon returning to the office.
Another common call forwarding scenario exists where a user has more than one office location. As shown in FIG. 2, the user may have an office telephone 30 in a first location as well as another office telephone 31 in a location different from office telephone 30. The user may desire to forward calls from both office telephones 30, 31 to a remote telephone 15 via switching network 10. This requires the user to activate call forwarding at each location where the office telephones 30, 31 are located. Thus, a user having more than one office telephone, either manually sets up call forwarding at each office or forgoes the call forwarding feature for particular office locations. Moreover, if a user wants to forward calls from his home telephone, office telephone, and mobile telephone, to another telephone, the user would have to perform this time consuming task at each location.
Existing call forwarding systems also enable remote control of call forwarding as well. For example, one remotely controlled call forwarding system requires a user to dial a special service number that is associated with the call forwarding system for their office phone. Next, the user enters required PIN codes, forwarding on/off codes, forward-to numbers, etc., using the touch tone pad of the phone from which the user is calling. As a result, the user is able to use another telephone to remotely control the forwarding of calls originally destined to a first telephone that is remote from the xe2x80x9canother telephonexe2x80x9d.
In each of the above-mentioned systems, however, the user is required to enter a complex sequence of codes or button-presses. Many users find this difficult to perform, and consequently do not regularly forward their telephone calls. Moreover, when a user has multiple telephones, the user must perform the time consuming task of call forwarding for each telephone, whether locally or remotely, in order for each of his/her incoming calls to reach one desired telephone.
The present invention is therefore directed to the problem of developing a synchronized call forwarding system that can control forwarding for all multiple telephones in a simple, efficient and easily understood manner.
The present invention solves this problem by allowing a user to call forward calls from a plurality of different telephones lines to one single telephone in one easy operation.
According to the present invention, a system for performing the method for synchronized call forwarding of an incoming call from any of a plurality of telephones includes receiving a synchronized call forwarding command at a first telephony device, sending the synchronized call forwarding command from the first telephony device to a second telephony device over a first network, receiving a telephone call at the second telephony device over a second network, and forwarding the incoming call in accordance with the synchronized call forwarding command received from the first telephony device over the second network.